Serfs of the Turf makes a strong argument that college players ought to be compensated, given the huge amounts of money involved in college football (and, presumably, basketball). Regardless of where you stand on the issue, it’s an interesting read.
Yearly Archives: 2007
“Imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit.”
Due Process? Who needs it!
DC suspends any meaningful review for parking tickets. Whups.
Dear DiFi: Fuck You
Feinstein may face censure from her Democratic colleagues over her pro-Bush votes.
Dept. of Ballot Stuffing
Go vote for Bear. NOW. He’s trailing some loser named Tom Osborne. (Amusingly, basically nobody has any votes but Bryant and Osborne — not Paterno, not Bowden, not Warner, etc.)
It’s not like Japan has a lock on weirdly sexualized commercials, right?
As it happens, France is right there with them. Really, don’t miss this, but it’s probably not safe for work.
(Via)
YAKSYAKSYAKSYAKSYAKSYAKSYAKS
Coolest. Guest Bed. EVAR.
We’re pretty sure this is the first time someone has a legitimate claim to the phrase “Murphy bed of the future.”
(Via.)
The Mefi Headline is best
“That was a dumb move, wasn’t it?” Yes, Rob, eating a million-Scoville Jolokia raw does probably qualify you for some sort of Darwin award, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to grow some of our own.
Dept. of Grossly Unfair Expectations
Understanding as we do the nature of computing, and having as we do a 20+ year history with said devices, we are occasionally briefly astounded that, say, the our thumbdrive has more storage capacity than all the computers we owned prior to 1999 combined.
This does not, however, make it ok that we curse and become frustrated with our current platform if it slows down even a little bit when doing all of the following:
- Playing music over the stereo via wifi;
- Running a virtualized Windows XP machine containing Outlook, IE, and PowerPoint;
- Periodically checking email from 4 servers;
- Periodically polling some 200+ rss feeds;
- all while having an editor, a personal Wiki, a note/document repository app, Word, an outliner, and a dozen Firefox windows open.
Wow.
We see enough of ourselves in The Nerd Handbook that it’s almost scary.
Best. Game. EVAR.
It’s a shame that Accordian Hero isn’t real.
SabanWatch Week 11: One Cloud and Lots of Silver Linings
We’ll start with the bad news, which is that NickyLou and the Tide have now managed to drop two in a row to Sly Croom’s MSU Bulldogs, which is not going to sit well with the Crimson Nation back in Tuscaloosa. MSU dropped our Tide 17 to 12 in a sloppy, sloppy game that included an end-zone INT run back for a Bulldog TD. Yuck. The math doesn’t change much, but it’s still a loss. Nick Saban Point Per Million drops to 2.3125.
However, Saturday did bring us plenty of opportunities to get happy. Let’s start with the biggest news: formerly top-ranked Ohio State got upset by the unranked Illini. Whups! Buh-bye, No. 1 and BCS title bid! And guess who shows back up at the top of the list? LSU, who cruised to a big win over La-Tech as they enter the easier part of their slate.
What else? More comeuppance for paper tiger BC, who fell to unranked Maryland 42 to 35. Insert Nelson laugh here.
Oh, and it gets better: Notre Dame managed to fall to another service academy in their spectacular 41 to 24 loss to Air Force. The Irish still face Duke and Stanford, and could easily lose both. How much longer will Weis have a job? ESPN wonders the same thing:
The Irish, who were held to 58 yards rushing, had lost eight games in a season twice before, going 2-8 in 1956 and 1960.
It was also the school-record sixth straight home loss. Notre Dame could finish the season winless at home if it doesn’t beat Duke next week. The only other times that has happened were in 1887 (0-1), 1918 (0-0-1) and 1933 (0-3-1).
“As a team, we’re at that low point, basically the lowest of lows,” safety David Bruton said. “But we’ve got to keep plugging.”
The loss dropped Weis’ career record to 20-15. His predecessor, Tyrone Willingham, was fired after three seasons with a 21-15 record.
This week was also fun if you hate Steve Spurrier, as all right-thinking fans do: his Cocks couldn’t get over Urban Meyer’s Gators, who spanked their old coach 51 to 31; Florida QB Tebow rushed for 5 TDs and threw for 2 more.
Even better, Coach Fran lost, too. All in all, an acceptable Saturday even with the Bulldog win.
Anyway, BCS isn’t out yet, but AP is, and they have it: LSU, Oregon, Oklahoma, Kansas, and West Virginia. The Buckeyes drop to 7.
Update: BCS is now out, and varies slightly: LSU, Oregon, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and then West Virginia. OSU is 7 in both polls. Kansas is totally a paper tiger here; they’ve beaten basically nobody and have a schedule packed with powerhouses such as Central Michigan, SE Louisiana, Florida International, Baylor, etc. It’s starting to look like Tigers vs. Ducks or Sooners in the big game; time will tell.
Sad but true
So, Fox has announced that Joss Whedon will be helming a new show starring Buffy alumna Eliza Dushku called Dollhouse.
Based on Fox’s prior behavior, there is already a petition online to keep Fox from cancelling it.
Why you should support the Writers’ Guild
Explained in four minutes. Go. Watch.
Dept. of Net Weirdness
It’s widely known that some security camera feeds are unsecured on the net, and that by knowing the general format one can find all sorts of them on Google.
Now somebody has taken that information and made a Mac screen saver with it. Excellent.
(Via JWZ.)
Sadly, they didn’t have it at Central Market this afternoon
Jones Soda’s Christmas Pack includes ham soda.
What you need to know about telco immunity
Long things you should read
Our affection for Fred Clark’s Slacktivist is well documented. Clark is a journalist, but also an evangelical Christian frankly dismayed by what’s become of his church. He’s made much sport of the Left Behind books in a series of posts described as “reading them so you don’t have to;” they are at once hilarious and depressing.
He’s in the midst of a new series of posts now worth a review if you find yourself confused by the vision of a church based on Christ’s compassion being so obsessed with contempt for homosexuals. Check out “The Gay-Hatin’ Gospel:”
- Part 1: The Safe Target
- Part 2: Inner Demons
- Part 3: The Innocent Backlash
- Part 4: The Exegetical Panic Defense, which includes this:
Part of the answer, I think, has little to do with homosexuals or homosexuality per se. It has to do, rather, with epistemology — with the need for certainty and the panicked hostility that surfaces when that certainty is threatened. “We see through a glass, darkly,” St. Paul said, warning against the temptation to chase the will-o’-the-wisp of certainty. But American evangelicalism is largely based on the idea that certainty is not only possible, but necessary. Mandatory, even. This certainty can be achieved thanks to the one-legged stool of the Evangelical Unilateral. That’s a made-up term, but it describes something real. It’s a play on the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” — an approach to theological thinking that relies on the four foundations of scripture, tradition/community, reason and experience. The evangelical approach to theological thinking is exactly like this Wesleyan method, except it doesn’t include tradition or community. Or reason. Or experience.
- Part 5: It’s the politics, stupid
- Part 6: In which critics who believe there really IS some sort of moral struggle happening are answered, and he illustrates how a longing for legislative enforcement of religious mores paints a picture of weak moral fiber
I’m sure he’s more to say on the subject, but read these. It’s illuminating.
Fug.
Norman Mailer is dead. He was 84.
Cops + Tasers = FAIL
Now they’ve zapped a sober diabetic found unconscious in his car and “combative”.
Best. Headline. EVAR.
For old people like us
We miss Concrete Blonde:
Lovely
Sleeping man tasered in his own home. No kidding. Is it not yet obvious that giving these things to cops isn’t working out well?
Two Disturbing Economic Developments from Pop Culture
Both from Kottke:
- There is a new rap video by Jay-Z wherein he waves Euro notes, not Benjamins, to illustrate his wealth.
- Further, supermodel Gisele Bundchen now wishes to be paid in Euros, not dollars.
Ooops.
Grrr
We have another torture AG, it appears, and it totally didn’t have to happen: the vote to confirm was 53 to 40, which means a cloture vote was a real possibility. Add to this that the campaigning Dems didn’t show to vote. We reckon there’s some angle to allowing another yesman to get confirmed to show everyone how bankrupt the GOP is, but it really IS time to play hardball. The GOP have fucked up everything in sight, and have no reason to stop now. The Democrats really need to tighten up and play hard to show America they’re just as pissed off as everyone else.
Rolling over on “waterboarding may not be torture” Mukasey ain’t gonna do it.
WurstPix
Photographs from the Wurstfest run-and-drink trip last weekend are now up on the HeathenFlicker. Enjoy, if that’s your sort of thing.
Ze on the Strike
Ze Frank returns from retirement to provide us with some commentary on the Writers’ Strike, among other things. Don’t miss it, especially if you’re Mrs Heathen.
Um, wow
Click through if 5.14c rings any bells for you. The route includes a 30-foot runout and a 70+ foot fall potential.
Major League Baseball Hates You
Remember how we keep reminding you about DRM being a bad idea, and that you should only ever buy content you can treat as you please?
Yeah, here’s another example why. Basically, MLB has been selling some digital downloads on their site for a while that include DRM. The DRM pings some central server to validate that it’s ok to run. MLB has shifted to a new DRM system, though, and has abandoned all the old content. None of the old downloads work anymore, and their answer to customers is basically “suck it up and buy them again.” Really.
Dear Intarwub:
Please get us a robot goat. Kthxbi.
As it turns out, they’ve got boneheads in England, too
So, there’s a lotto-type game over there, and one of the scratch-off games involved getting temperature values lower than some target value. Bonehead buys card (thus illustrating a basic and common level of innumeracy) that has target value of -8, scratches off two numbers, and then is convinced he’s being had because he doesn’t know -6 is higher than -8:
On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn’t.
I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher – not lower – than -8 but I’m not having it.
Wow.
Things we’re almost afraid to mention
Some Heathen might enjoy BabyGadget.
Keith is our Conscience, Again
His most recent special comment concerns fired U.S. Acting Assistant AG Daniel Levin, who lost his job for speaking out against torture generally and waterboarding specifically — after he had the technique used on himself to better evaluate it. Olbermann begins:
Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the meaning of the story of former U.S. Acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin.
It is a fact startling in its cynical simplicity and it requires cynical and simple words to be properly expressed:
The presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush.
Go read the whole thing.
Sometimes, Div III is better
Trinity came back to beat Millsaps after time expired with a play that involved 15 laterals.
In a word, Daaaaaamn.
(Corrected.)
Mukasey Hates Boobies
Check Balko for more; Mukasey has basically promised Orrin Hatch that he’ll pursue “mainstream obscenity” in his hypothetical DOJ, which is code for “I’ll crack down on porn.”
Balko:
It’s important to note, here, that “mainstream obscenity” is a contradiction in terms. Obscenity, at least by the Supreme Court’s definition in Miller v. California, isn’t “mainstream.” What Hatch wants are pornography prosecutions.
Still, it’s helpful to know the spirit of Ed Meese is still alive and well in the Republican Party. Never mind that, as I’ve explained before, just about every measurable social indicator that people like Hatch believe could be affected by the availability of pornography is moving the other way, and has been since the early-to-mid 1990s, also the very period over which the Internet has made porn abundant, free, and easily accessible. Over the last 15 years, rapes are down to historic lows, abortions are way down, teen sex is down, teen pregnancy is down to historic lows, divorces are down, and crimes against children are down.
This dude just gets better and better.
Oh lovely
The Feds would like very much to convince the courts that you have no right to privacy in email. This would mean that any email communication could be eavesdropped upon without any sort of warrant or court oversight.
We’re pretty sure this is a bad idea.
Awwwwww
Sources say A&M is in talks to buy out Coach Fran. Buh-bye.
Amusingly, the story mentions the Aggies seeking a conversation with Auburn coash Tommy Tuberville. We’re not sure trading Auburn for College Station would make sense for Tuberville, nor are we sure his stock is high enough to warrant the kind of cash it would probably take to entice him to make the move.
(Hat tip to Attorney.)
SabanWatch, Week 10: No, really, we’re happy — or, We Are All Midshipmen Now
We’ll lead with the big story: NickyLou met his old pals from the Bayou on Saturday in a serious SEC brawl of the first order. We’re sad our Tide couldn’t hold on, but we feel pretty good about their performance against one of the top programs in the country. They made LSU earn the win, and looked good doing it. The silver lining for us is that the victorious Tigers — and therefore the SEC — are still in the national title hunt; they’re back at No. 2 in the BCS, behind Ohio State, so we’re reasonably content. However, the results hurt the PPM; let’s do the math.
When we last checked in, after the rout of Tennessee, we had some 86 victory points; this one-touchdown loss takes us back to 79, so the new Nick Saban Points Per Million Value is 2.46875, or not at all far from our high of 2.6875 after he sent Fulmer crying all the way back to Rockytop. We remain pleased.
Of course, a couple other events on Saturday contribute to our overall rosy outlook.
First, the unranked Seminoles of Florida State showed Boston College how to play football, and handed the perfect-up-to-now Eagles their first loss — and in so doing knocked those pansy yankees out of title contention. Way to go, Bowden!
Second, of course, is even better. As we have hoped all year, Saturday marked the first time since 1963 that the U.S. Naval Academy Midshipmen have beaten the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame; it took 3 OTs to do it. The 43 game streak was the longest ever in NCAA top division football, and its ending is yet another feather in the hat of this year’s Irish, who are now on a school-record 5 game losing streak. For his part, Weis is sanguine; ESPN quotes him as thinking the streak had no meaning for him or the team. We trust the Irish faithful will disabuse him of this notion in short order.
ND’s season isn’t over, either: they still face Air Force, Duke, and USC-toppling Stanford, and we figure they won’t win more than one of those. Sadly for us, it’s pretty clear we won’t have the pleasure of watching ND lose yet another bowl game (last bowl victory: 1994 Cotton Bowl, against A&M) this time around, but the Navy game was a pretty fine consolation prize. The Academy agrees, by the way, as they cancelled classes today in celebration.
(By the way, we’re also pretty happy that Coach Fran got pounded on Saturday, too, as A&M fell to Oklahoma 42 to 14. The Tide faithful were sorry to see him go, but the truth will out, and the Aggies are welcome to him.)
Remember, Remember
Where we are today
Arlington, VA.
So far, not nearly as much fun as Seattle.
We’re running late with the SabanWatch, but in the meantime, here’s some bitching
Dear NFL: Fuck You. The NFL’s rules on broadcasting games — such as this afternoon’s much ballyhooed contest between the remaining undefeated teams in the league — mean that any market with an un-sold-out local-team game can’t see any other games on TV at the same time, supposedly to encourage in-person attendance. Yes, this means even in Houston, with the Texans on the road.
There are a number of problems with this. On any given Sunday, there are games expected to be interesting — like Colts v. Pats — and games unlikely to be worth two squirts of piss, both in terms of competition and in terms of the later season, like, say, Texans v. Raiders. The NFL doesn’t care what we want to watch, though; they want to control the feeds and force us, if we want to watch football at 3:00 today, to watch the crappy game instead of the one everyone will be talking about tomorrow.
Again: Fuck you, NFL.
It’s really yet another example of old business models trying to force their way through a new world. It’s not gonna happen. The more ways of communication we have, the more ways people like the NFL have to figure out how to block to preserve these chickenshit restrictions. Here’s a clue: give people what they want to buy, and stop doing things like this to piss them off.
This kind of crap is another in the long list of reasons we never, ever go to live games. It’s a shitty experience compared to watching at home, and encourages these absurd rules. Fuck that.
The Chron, believe it or not, has a good piece on it.
Wurstfest Results
So, here we are, all done. Results pleased pretty much everybody, but are inexact because it wasn’t a “chip” race, so if you weren’t at the starting line to begin with your official time is off by as much as a minute or two:
- Eric: 43/44 and change (under his goal of 9s!);
- Lindsey: 1:02 or so;
- Chief Heathen: 1:03 or 1:04 or so, only a bit behind Lindsey;
- Mrs Heathen: 1:20, with lots more running than walking
We will now commence drinking beer and eating meat.
I’s workin’ on my farm / ’bout 1982
Real life bales of cocaine are washing up onshore in Nicaragua.
The Prohibitionists are Coming
Reason runs down the threat to liberty that has grown out of Candy Lightner’s MADD. Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 1980, but now finds their obsession with any alcohol consumption to border on mania. She’s right.
As it happens, pushing the legal limit lower and lower isn’t driven by data at all; it’s more about Carrie Nation redux. Click through for more. Lowering the limit from .1 to .08 did NOTHING statistically meaningful to traffic fatalities, though we’re sure it certainly DID add significant cash to country and city coffers.
Fuck You, Fred
The Westboro Baptist “Church” — principally known for their very Christlike God-Hates-Fags protests — has lost an $11 million lawsuit over a protest they staged at a military funeral.
Best Headline Today
Over at Huffington Post: “Biden: Rudy’s Sentences Consist of ‘A Noun, A Verb, and 9/11’.”
In the unlikely event you hadn’t seen anything creepy today
How about a squid with human-looking teeth? (Don’t worry; apparently they’re very small.)
Because, realistically, if he didn’t, who would?
Well, that was fun: SabanWatch Week 9
Perhaps it’s a bit disingenuous to call it SabanWatch this week, since the Tide didn’t play (nor did LSU), so the value is unchanged (2.6875), but there’s still much to discuss.
Two upsets really please us: Mississippi State over previously-golden 14th-ranked Kentucky, and of course the “shocking” loss by USC to Oregon. Both really warm our hearts, but for different reasons.
MSU is perennially a stepchild in Mississippi and SEC football (Ole Miss gets all the love, to say nothing of USM), but Sly Croom has been quietly building a program in Starkville, apparently. The Bulldogs improve to 5-4, 2-3 in the SEC — but those two wins were over Auburn and Kentucky, and are probably enough to keep his job. Especially if he beats those rich bastards from Oxford (who, it should be noted, are having only slightly more success than Notre Dame this year).
With USC, we just love to see them lose. This win for the Ducks actually puts them in the title hunt
Some comeuppance happened this time around, too, though the one we hoped for (Cal over ASU) didn’t happen. ASU is still perfect, but perfect’s easy with a schedule like theirs up to this point. Coming up, though, they’ve got Oregon, UCLA, and USC, and we wouldn’t bet on ’em bagging all of those.
In the Disapointment column, we mark down Urban Meyer’s boys. Ranked 7 spots over Georgia, they still couldn’t close the deal. The Dawgs bottled up Tim Tebow and dominated the game from start to finish, finally whipping the Gators 42 to 30. It’s not a good week to be Coach Meyer, we’re betting, if you can’t bag a long-running rivalry the year after your take the brass ring. Ouch.
This week’s “Why Can’t They Both Lose” award goes to the Fulmer v Spurrier contest that ended in OT with the unranked Vols squeaking by Spurrier’s Cocks. Whups!
Oh, and South Florida Who? Much was said about how unfair their drop in the polls after their single loss was, especially compared to the treatment powerhouse programs like LSU get — except LSU has kept winning, and now the Bulls are down two in a row. The rest of their slate is unremarkable, and they deserve kudos for bagging Auburn and West Virginia, but title team? We don’t think so.
The rankings are of course out by now: BCS has it Buckeyes, BC, LSU, and so does the AP. We still don’t believe in BC despite their record, but time will tell.
(Yes, we know: No Irish snark this week. They had a bye, but next weekend should be fun: it’s Navy’s big chance.)